When it comes to printing your family cookbook, page count is the largest determining factor on what the cost per book will be.

To lower the number of pages that need to be printed, you don’t always have to just delete recipes. Here are some simple formatting charges you can make to affect your page count.

Go to Editor Tools>Publishing Tool>Cookbook Options and Design.  Under Recipe Layout, choose any or all of these options to save space:

• Choose Arial or Times Roman, Two Column Small for the smallest type faces
• UNcheck Print my recipes in non-continued format
• UNcheck Force recipe photos to be on same page as recipe
• CHECK Print Directions and Comments as single paragraphs
• Under Recipe Sorting, choose Print my recipes in book order – shortest to longest

Another thing to do is look at your recipes that are more than one page long. We show you multi page recipes in the “recipes by category” index. There is a “*” next to the edit button of long recipes. Consider removing some of these recipes by unchecking the box by the recipe title and see the impact on page count.

Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!